Monsieur Lecoq eBook

“Don’t be in such a hurry to reject my
compliments,” replied old Tabaret, with a horrible
grimace. “I say that you have conducted
this investigation very well; but it could have been
done much better, very much better. You have
a talent for your work, that’s evident; but
you lack experience; you become elated by a trifling
advantage, or discouraged by a mere nothing; you fail,
and yet persist in holding fast to a fixed idea, as
a moth flutters about a candle. Then, you are
young. But never mind that, it’s a fault
you will outgrow only too soon. And now, to speak
frankly, I must tell you that you have made a great
many blunders.”

Lecoq hung his head like a schoolboy receiving a reprimand
from his teacher. After all was he not a scholar,
and was not this old man his master?

“I will now enumerate your mistakes,”
continued old Tabaret, “and I will show you
how, on at least three occasions, you allowed an opportunity
for solving this mystery to escape you.”

“But—­”

“Pooh! pooh! my boy, let me talk a little while
now. What axiom did you start with? You
said: ’Always distrust appearances; believe
precisely the contrary of what appears true, or even
probable.’”

“Yes, that is exactly what I said to myself.”

“And it was a very wise conclusion. With
that idea in your lantern to light your path, you
ought to have gone straight to the truth. But
you are young, as I said before; and the very first
circumstance you find that seems at all probable you
quite forget the rule which, as you yourself admit,
should have governed your conduct. As soon as
you meet a fact that seems even more than probable,
you swallow it as eagerly as a gudgeon swallows an
angler’s bait.”

This comparison could but pique the young detective.
“I don’t think I’ve been so simple
as that,” protested he.

“Bah! What did you think, then, when you
heard that M. d’Escorval had broken his leg
in getting out of his carriage?”

“Believe! I believed what they told me,
because—­” He paused, and Tirauclair
burst into a hearty fit of laughter.

“You believed it,” he said, “because
it was a very plausible story.”

“What would you have believed had you been in
my place?”

“Exactly the opposite of what they told me.
I might have been mistaken; but it would be the logical
conclusion as my first course of reasoning.”

This conclusion was so bold that Lecoq was disconcerted.
“What!” he exclaimed; “do you suppose
that M. d’Escorval’s fall was only a fiction?
that he didn’t break his leg?”

XXIV

Lecoq’s confidence in the oracle he was consulting
was very great; but even old Tirauclair might be mistaken,
and what he had just said seemed such an enormity,
so completely beyond the bounds of possibility, that
the young man could not conceal a gesture of incredulous
surprise.